Texas Border Wall Project Moves Forward, Mile by Mile

The Texas border crisis is an issue that has polarized the country and caused endless debates. For years, state officials have fought over how to tackle this growing problem. Three years ago Gov. Greg Abbott announced that Texas was taking the helm to remedy the situation and building a state-funded wall along the Mexican border. So far, a total of 34 miles of steel bollards spanning across six counties are in place.

The Texas Facilities Commission is leading installation efforts of an infrastructure estimated to cost around $25 million per mile. The wall will go up in sections along Texas’ 1,254-mile southern border. The state’s struggle to secure land access has slowed progress challenges signaling a long and enormously expensive slog ahead for Abbott.

Despite challenges, state contractors continue to make good headway on Abbott’s wall project. State officials hope to deliver approximately 100-plus miles of wall by the end of calendar year 2026, at a rate of about half a mile per week. Funding for the program was appropriate by the 87th, 88th, and 88-4 legislative sessions, and donated funds.

Border Wall Funding and Land Acquisition

State officials plan to install the metal structures along a border consisting of more than 800 miles. Construction is estimated to take more than 30-plus years and cost $20 billion to finish. The process to build the structure is slow moving and officials have come up against a few challenges, including land acquisition.

While the debate on funding the border wall continues, some Americans feel that U.S. national security outweighs the cost.

“I think at the end of the day, they need to get ahead of the wall. They got to start buying that land. They can compensate the people with private land in order to build the wall. I get that there’s resistance to it, but I feel like it’s a matter of national security. I mean, our border is not strong,” said Dutch Mendenhall, Founder of RADD companies. “The Chinese government is one of the greatest threats to our country. The ability for them to send drugs like fentanyl through our borders, which anybody who’s studying it knows that this is what’s happening right now. It’s serious.”

Since mid-June, officials have secured 79 easements covering nearly 59 miles of the border. According to State officials, they are still in various stages of negotiation with landowners over another 113 miles.

EAGLE PASS, TEXAS – MARCH 17: In an aerial view, a Texas National Guard soldier walks past a barrier of shipping containers and razor wire at he U.S.-Mexico border on March 17, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. Texas National Guard troops have fortified the U.S.-Mexico border with vast a amount of razor wire as part of Governor Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” to deter migrants from crossing into Texas. The U.S. southwestern border stretches nearly 2,000 miles, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and is marked by fences, deserts, mountains and the Rio Grande, which runs the entire length of Texas. The politics surrounding border and immigration issues have become dominant themes in the U.S. presidential election campaign. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Unlike the border in California, Arizona, or New Mexico, which is largely federal land, much of the Texas-Mexico border is privately owned. According to a 2020 Government Accountability Office report, it took the Trump administration 21 to 30 months to seize privately owned land in South Texas for wall construction. The report said comparable land acquisitions in other parts of the country took a year.

Texas will need a vast amount of private land to build Abbott’s wall. The governor has said state officials are in talks with private property owners along the border who are willing to donate their land so the state can build barriers on their property.

EAGLE PASS, TEXAS – MARCH 17: In an aerial view, Texas National Guard soldiers guard the U.S.-Mexico border on the bank of the Rio Grande on March 17, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. Texas National Guard troops have fortified the U.S.-Mexico border with vast a amount of razor wire as part of Governor Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” to deter migrants from crossing into Texas. The U.S. southwestern border stretches nearly 2,000 miles, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and is marked by fences, deserts, mountains and the Rio Grande, which runs the entire length of Texas. The politics surrounding border and immigration issues have become dominant themes in the U.S. presidential election campaign. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Launch of Operation Lone Star

In 2021, Governor Greg Abbott made an historic move and launched Operation Lone Star, deploying the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety to the southern border.

So far, Abbott, with the backing of state lawmakers, has received approval for more than $3 billion for the wall, making it one of the biggest items under Operation Lone Star, the governor’s $11 billion border crackdown. Portions of the money are funding other initiatives such as positioning state police and National Guard soldiers at the border and transporting migrants to Democrat-controlled cities

According to a press release, Texas’s Operation Lone Star has personnel working around the clock to detect and stop illegal crossings, arrest cartel gang members, stop the flow of illegal drugs including fentanyl, and curb human smuggling.

Debate continues as to whether or not the new wall will resolve the border crisis. President Biden pledged to stop work on the wall while running for office. The construction of a wall along the Mexico and Lone star state border was a signature policy and campaign promise made by former President Donald Trump in 2016.